Inside Dante Ferretti's Maze of Moving Images at MoMA

For Dante Ferretti, a renowned production designer for over 50 films, destruction is as necessary to the process of making a movie as creation. He has crafted intricate sets for Tim Burton (Sweeney Todd), Franco Zafferelli (Hamlet), and most recently, designed the Oscar award-winning CGI set of Martin Scorsese's Hugo. Yet when the movie wraps, the elaborate worlds he constructs are torn down, preserved only in film.

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"It's better that way—if it can't be reused," Ferretti said yesterday at the opening of "Dante Ferretti: Design and Construction for the Cinema" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. "Every time you have to think of something new."

Inside the exhibition, the true feat of his phoenix-like craft was on display. The room was dimmed and a maze of moving images had been constructed, mute films projected on paper-thin screens. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors evoked the dizzying feel of a labyrinth. The walls showcased detailed sketches (easily recognizable as movie scenes) of elegant parlor rooms from The Age of Innocence, a hell-like forum of flames and hulking shadows from Titus, and the Escher-like stairwell of the Ashecliffe Hospital seen in Shutter Island. This display was the result of preservation work done by a team of self-referential "film archeologists," who spent six years collecting fragments of Ferretti's immolated sets.

"Every movie I do is something new," he said, noting that he rarely watches any of the films he has worked on more than once. He began his career at age 17 as an assistant art direct for Pier Paolo Pasolini and continued to work with the greatest directors of Italian cinema, turning down Scorsese twice before finally agreeing to work with him. "He is my hero," Ferretti said of the director, with whom he has now made eight films.

For the past 35 years, Ferretti has also worked alongside his wife, Francesca Lo Schiavo, and together they have won three Academy Awards for their art direction in The Aviator, Hugo, and Sweeney Todd. Currently they are based in London for production on Cinderella, which will star Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham Carter, and Lily James.

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"I am like a gypsy," Ferretti mused. "Maybe it [would be] better to buy a trailer." When asked about his favorite location, he cracked a small smile. "There is a place near the moon, a small place, a small island, near the moon," he said, with a laugh. "I also like to be in Rome."

22 of Ferretti's film will be screened at the MoMA alongside the exhibition through February 9.

Courtesy of Dante Ferretti

The Aviator – Hangar A Long Beach. 2003; Photo: Courtesy of the Artist